Schiller’s poetry has not lost its influence on me. A few months ago I read _Wallenstein_, that titanic work, aloud to my son. The man who has lost his taste for Schiller has grown old or pedantic, has grown hard or forgotten himself. What is one to say of these precocious _altkluge Burschen_ who know his defects so well at seventeen? Footnote 55: Written in 1853. Footnote 56: Translated by Juliet Soskice. Footnote 57: The hero of _La Vie du Chevalier de Faublas_ (1787), by Louvet de Couvray, is the type of the effeminate rake and fashionable exquisite of the period.—(_Translator’s Note._) Footnote 58: Beaumarchais, author of _Le Barbier de Séville_ and _Le Mariage de Figaro_. Footnote 59: Casti (1721–1803), an Italian poet, ‘attached by habit and taste to the polished and frivolous society of the _ancien regime_, his sympathies were nevertheless liberal,’ satirised Catherine II. and, when exiled on that account from Vienna, had the spirit to resign his Austrian pension. The _Talking Animals_, a satire on the predominance of the foreigner in political life, is his best work. The influence of his poems on Byron is apparent in ‘Don Juan.’—(_Translator’s Notes._) Footnote 60: Gonzaga was a Venetian painter who came to Petersburg in 1792 to paint scenery for the Court Theatre. He planned the celebrated park at Pavlovsk. Footnote 61: Derzhavin, Gavril Romanovitch (1743–1816), was poet-laureate to Catherine II., and wrote numerous patriotic and a few other odes. Footnote 62: Krylov, Ivan Andreyevitch (1768–1844), was a very popular writer of fables in verse.—(_Translator’s Notes._) Footnote 63: Marmontel (1723–1799), author of the _Contes Moraux_ and other stories. Footnote 64: Marivaux (1688–1763), author of numerous plays and a novel called _Marianne_—all distinguished by an excessive refinement of sentiment and language. Footnote 65: Shalikov and V. Panaev were insignificant writers of the early part of the eighteenth century.—(_Translator’s Notes._) Footnote 66: Arapov (1796–1861) wrote some twenty plays, but is chiefly remembered for the _Chronicle of the Russian Theatre_ (published after his death), a chronological record of everything performed on the Russian stage up to 1825. Footnote 67: I. I. Dmitriev (1760–1837) wrote a number of fables and songs, of which ‘The Little Dove’ is the best known. He was a great patron of young literary men, and in 1810 was made Minister of Justice. Footnote 68: Vassily Lvovitch Pushkin, a minor poet, uncle of the famous Pushkin.—(_Translator’s Notes._) Footnote 69: The uniform of the secret police of which Benckendorf was head was light blue with a white strap. Footnote 70: See later, Appendix to Chapter 7 for a full account of this. Footnote 71: The Kritsky brothers were said to have broken a bust of the Tsar at a drinking party.—(_Translator’s Notes._) Footnote 72: